weezo, June 21, 2007 @ 10:19 AM:"Maps as early as 1428 showed some of the Carribean Islands, including Puerto Rico, which was called Antilia."

That’s the first I’ve heard of Antilla being identified specifically as Puerto Rico. Does your book provide an illustration of the 1428 map you refer to? It sounds like a fascinating study.

In Bernard DeVoto’s The Course of Empire, he refers to a letter sent to Columbus mentioning Antilla, of which the letter writer says to Columbus "is well-known to you." This was before Columbus’ first voyage in 1492. As DeVoto wryly put it, “someone had been somewhere.”

I don’t recall which now, but one of America’s native tribal languages contains many words that sound suspiciously Gaelic. That of course has fueled speculation that Celtic monks from the British Isles found their way to America, perhaps before the Vikings. There are also theories about Phoenicians and Libyans being in America. Seafarers had been sailing to the Western hemisphere for centuries without the significance of their activities being fully appreciated in their native lands.

I don’t think it’s a mistake to say that Columbus discovered America. He obviously did, although the more balanced view is that different peoples at different times independently discovered America. But it was Columbus’ discovery that had a major impact on European awareness. When news of his first trip spread across the continent, it prompted Spain’s rivals to embark on their own expeditions across the Atlantic.

Yes, the book does include full color renditions of the historic maps as well as line drawings of Menzies' theories of the Chinese Treasure Fleet which explored the world.

I tend to agree that "someone had been somewhere" before 1492. Who, where, when and why is, at this point, up to your imagination and the facts that you can tease out of the imaginations of others.

I've been to the 1421 website www.1421.vt by Menzies, and used the email link there to request further information on some of the matters that are still a puzzle to me. I am rather concerned that although Menzies asserts that the Chinese landed somewhere around Norfolk, Virginia and let off some colonists whose DNA shows up in certain Native tribes but not in others, the map the Chinese generated and which was used at the time of Columbus does not show the Chesapeake Bay and it's many large rivers including the James, the Potamac and the Susquahannah, yet it shows both the Delaware river and the Hudson river, both of which are much smaller than the Chesapeake Bay. Menzies suggests that the Melungeon Indians, whose ancestery has posed many questions in Virginia and Carolina, are descended from the Chinese comcubines landed by Zheng Hi. So far, there is not a DNA confirmation which seems incredible to me. Those people lost their history with the European invasion and should be curious, yet the tests have not been done. I understand from those who've had geneological DNA sampled, that it is just a swab of the mouth, not an invasive procedure, and with a research machine as large as the website suggests, cost should not be a factor, so I wonder what is holding up the process. My copy of the book was published in UK in 2002, plenty of time to swab some mouths and get the testing done.

I have a website for Famous Americans that started out as a supplement to the Virginia SOLs (objectives of learning), and Columbus is one of the persons our children study. I'd like to put something on the website other than that he "Discovered America", but can't quite think of how to word it simply. He was the one whose journey to America made the press??

I'm open to suggestions. Columbus is studied by 1st graders, so it has to be in simple words.

caclark re:#427"That’s the first I’ve heard of Antilla being identified specifically as Puerto Rico."

I posted some material upstream in the sequence to dzimas, a bunch of links to the Northern Illinois University Press, and while reading through this material the other night before posting to him, I came across that suggestion of the significance of Puerto Rico, which remained a territory but eventually became a state.

Not sure the time that I have to go over it is available to me this afternoon, I'd have to roll through all their Native American materials, it was just one of those big options in passing that mentioned the discovery of the Antilles, and I rolled right by and rolled on to post the archeological/architectural materials onward to dzimas. Never dawned on me that the subject of the greater Antilles was about to come up within the next day or so! And I'm only half done with their list of publications! Take a look just browsing those links, until I get back to my book mark.

I just did a refresher with DeVoto. According to him, 15th century maps did not consistently place Antillia in the same location. Further north, further south, further east or west, it was all over the place. Sounds to me like Antillia might have been a general name for islands or even the mainland and that explorers returning from the far Atlantic were probably honestly reporting where they had been although the longitude/latitude coordinates they provided indicate that they were describing different places. DeVoto described Antillia as an arc shape. Antillia is of course considered by many to be a mythical place not unlike the legend of Atlantis. But then, the same was often said of the city of Troy which historians now believe was an actual city on the West coast of Asia Minor.

Rightly or wrongly, according to Menzies the reason for the floating nature of Antilla/Puerto Rico was due to the fact that some of the maps were constructed before people, both the Chinese and the Europeans, learned to properly calculate latitude and especially longitude. Longitude was more difficult to calculate than latitute. Latitude could be determine, eventually, by the North Star and the Southern Cross declentions. Longitude had to be measure by time at sea, or distance traveled. Both could be distorted by the ocean currents that pushed a ship along at a speedier clip than the amount of time would suggest. At the time the Portuguese were said to colonize Antilla/Puerto Rico, Longitude could not yet be determined, and Latitude was still imprecise. They more or less guessed at where they were.

I think, since I am limited to a single sentence, I'll settle for "Columbus was one of the people who discovered America." and let it go at that. That shouldn't put it too much at odds with other materials the students are using for their facts. Thanks for the helpful thoughts!

"....according to Menzies the reason for the floating nature of Antilla/Puerto Rico was due to the fact that some of the maps were constructed before people, both the Chinese and the Europeans, learned to properly calculate latitude and especially longitude....They more or less guessed at where they were."

If state of the art navigation and cartography in the 1400s was so haphazard, how can we be certain that we’re talking about Puerto Rico? Has archaeology shed any light on the theory? Ruins or artifacts that evidence a Portuguese presence in Puerto Rico in the early 1400s?

I do think that the possibility of the name Atillia being misapplied to different places or to a region in the Caribbean is one that must be considered, especially if geographical calculations were that unreliable.

You might wish to check out the link below which I came across in googling on Gavin Menzies. It’s a reprint of an article originally published in the Atlanta Journal Constitution regarding Menzies’ book 1421 and it’s not flattering to him. Menzies is not a historian. He is a retired British naval officer and his book for which he was paid a huge sum has been harshly criticized by historians for its historical research methods and its conclusions.

3.Portuguese maps of South America, created after the voyage of Coelho and Vespucci, do not show any land south of present-day Cananéia at 25º S, so this may represent the southernmost extent of their voyages.During the first half of the expedition, Vespucci mapped the two stars of Alpha Centauri and Beta Centauri, as well as the stars of the constellation Crux.[3] Although these stars were known to the ancient Greeks, gradual precession had lowered them below the European skyline so that they were forgotten.[4]

"They had still invented others, as cross-staff, or cane of Jacob (to get in the sea the height of the sun and other stars), that he does not use the graduation of an arc of circumference but a sliding segment throughout a connecting rod, with the eye of on-line observer in straight line with the star observed. But the results in accordance with varied as the day of the year, what it compelled the correction, done the inclination of the Sun in each one of these days. Therefore the Portuguese had made tables of inclination of the Sun in 15th century, printed in Venice after 1483. They were precious instruments of navigation in high-sea, having known a notable diffusion, as other tables that contained necessary corrections to the calculation of the latitude through the Polestar.

[edit] Henry the Navigator ...the Navigator died in 1460. Another vector of the discoveries were the voyages westward, during which the Portuguese discovered the sargasso sea and possibly sighted the shores of nova scotia well before 1492."

[edit] The Treaty of Tordesillas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Portugal_%281415-1542%29It is under this section that we find an interesting suggestion:"Columbus' discovery of what they thought was India at that time, is something that historians dispute in terms of the consequences that lead to this discovery. One theory which has some support, due to recent proof that has come to light, is that Columbus was indeed Portuguese as stated initially, but he was a spy from the Portuguese kingdom sent to Spain to redirect Spain's efforts elsewhere than the territories Portugal had its focus on. However, this is controversial. Actions such as this would come as no surprise, though, since competition between the two kingdoms was intense and both had their secret service networks which were in constant conflict with one another, by providing misleading information and in hiding territories and trade routes discovered by each country (but especially Portugal) by either keeping them concealed or by providing false dates and also false locations. This constant secrecy effort was what led to the creation of many "false" documents and thus many of the remaining documents from that time may not be reliable. As a consequence some historians believe that territories such as Brazil, several African locations along its coastline and north America (due to the voyages made westward) may have been discovered before the known dates."

The Portuguese in Asia

"Possessing only a population of one million people, the colonization effort of several colonies scattered all around the entire coast of Africa and its surrounding islands, Brazil, the Indies and also in several other regions in the Indic area such as in Malaysia, Japan, China, Indonesia and also Timor was proven to have been a very difficult task for the Portuguese empire, thus a very high level of secrecy concerning every trade route and colony had to be maintained in order to preserve the union of the empire. This extreme secrecy was also impeled by the very constant competition with the Spanish and as a consequence, many documents that could reach Spanish hands or any other European countries were in fact fake documents showing fake dates and facts, thus misleading any other nation's possible efforts.

Due to these extremely secretive policies by the Portuguese during the Age od Discoveries , many documents concerning the dates of Portuguese discoveries may very well behave been falsified, much to modern historian's frustration. Several historians have hypothesized that by the time of the Treaty of Tordesillas, John II may have already known of the existence of Brazil and North America by as early as 1480, thus justifying John II's wish to further push the line of influence further west. Many historians suspect that the real documents would have mostly likely been placed in the Library of Lisbon. Unfortunately, due to the great earthquake of 1755, nearly all of the library's records were destroyed by fire."

on pages 412-414, Menzies states that the fact that the island originally appear in the Atlantic is due to the fact that the Portuguese did not have good astrolobes/sextants in 1431, and that the correct latitude was not accurately shown until the 1474 chart by Toscanelli. In the 15th century, the Portuguese determined longitude by "dead reckoning, because they did not understand that the body of water was moving as they were moving. When the drawing of the island was transposed the allow for the water movement it was in the correct longitude. Also, on the original map from Italy, the island is shown larger than it is, which he suggest may have been an error in copying the scale of the islands from the original Chinese map to the first Italian map in 1428.

Considering the interest you show in this, you may want to get a copy of the books and read it. Mine was from a used book source from Amazone and fairly cheap (I bought three books same day, so don't remember what I paid for this one. Sorry).

I find the link you supplied rather amusing. The author's credential are far from sterling - he's only an asst prof, and at a obscure college. He makes too much of the fact that Menzies was paid for his work.

I regularly participate on the Virginia History List, and have since it's inception probably in the early nineties. I am well aware of how often historians dismiss the work of "amateurs". According to the historians, the Roanoke Island was a "Lost Colony", whereas the anthropologists, including the inestimable Helen Roundtree points out there is substantial oral tradition to support the fact that the settlers on Roanoke, when a ship did not return, moved in with the local Indians, and were probably killed when the great Chief Powhatan wiped out the tribe they were adopted into just a few years before the Jamestown Settlers arrived looking for them.

Same with the story of Sally Hemmings and Thomas Jefferson, which is based largely on oral tradition. Some of TJ's descendents accept the Hemmings descendents as kin, others refuse to believe the account even in light of the high likelihood provided by the DNA tests.

Historians can be a bit stuffy at time. Sometimes you have to look beyond the vision of Academia to get at the source of truth.